The Bad Room

Chapter 4

I was in the house playing when I realised there was banging coming from outside. It was December 1995, four months after Ellen was born. Mum had gone out, leaving the three of us in the house with Paul. I could hear her shouting outside. What was going on? Why wasn’t she in the house?

‘Jade!’ Paul shouted. ‘Get Jack and Ellen. Come into the living room.’

There was a lot of banging and movement of furniture coming from inside. I did as I was told, got my siblings and we made our way tentatively into the living room. The room was in semi-darkness because the curtains were drawn but we could still see the place was a mess. Paul had moved furniture about. There were chairs overturned, ornaments knocked over and stuff everywhere. Paul looked mad, like his face was about to burst. He was jumping about frantically and kept going to the window, pulling back the curtains and shouting down to the street. I could hear my mum screaming, ‘Don’t hurt the kids!’

Once we were inside he shut the door and moved the sofa and other bits and pieces over to barricade us in. He hauled the table nearer to the window. A picture frame got knocked off the wall and smashed on the floor.

My brother and sister were scared, their lips trembling. I tried to reassure them but I was frightened too.

‘What’s going on?’ I said, my voice shaking.

‘Come here!’ He grabbed me hard by the wrist and hauled me to the window. He was hurting me so I tried to do what he wanted, whatever that was. He pulled me up and made me sit on the table. He pulled back the curtains and I blinked at the sudden exposure to the light. When my eyes adjusted I looked below and could see Mum there on the street. She was banging on the door. The neighbours were out watching the unfolding drama.

‘Here’s Jade! She’s fine.’ Paul was manic. Now there was light in the room I could see his eyes were like pinpricks. I knew what that meant. He was back on drugs. ‘Tell your mum you’re fine.’

‘I’m okay, Mum,’ I called. ‘So are Jack and Ellen.’

‘Let me in, Paul, for God’s sake! What are you doing?’

‘Just go and get the bloody money!’ Paul shouted, still gripping me by the wrist so tightly I could feel my skin burn.

I didn’t know how we’d got to this situation but it was obvious he wanted Mum to get him money for drugs. They shouted at each other, Jack and Ellen started crying. It was chaos. I wanted to go and cuddle them but I couldn’t move.

‘Please let me check they’re okay,’ I said, starting to well up.

Without warning he yanked the curtains shut again and pushed me down from the table. He shoved me onto the carpet and I screamed in agony. I could feel my face being cut to shreds. I couldn’t work out what was happening. Then I realised. My head had gone right into the broken picture frame. I got up from the floor and put my hands to my face. They were covered in blood that was now pouring down my face. Paul was still shouting. Amid the chaos I could hear Mum yell that she was away to get the money. She was saying something about the police. Were they outside or on their way? We were still barricaded in the darkness. I was crying, trying to stem the bleeding. Paul shouted at us all to stop crying, which only made us sob even more.

It must only have been a few minutes but it seemed like an eternity that we were trapped in there, Paul screaming out the window to anyone who would listen. Mum then came back. I could hear her shouting that she’d got the money.

‘Put it through the letterbox,’ Paul yelled.

Mum did so. Paul moved the furniture away from the door and ran downstairs. I heard the back door open and he must have fled, as I didn’t hear him anymore.

‘Jade, you need to let me in,’ Mum shouted.

I checked Jack and Ellen were okay and then ran downstairs and opened the front door. Mum was horrified at the cuts to my face. She comforted my brother and sister and they eventually calmed down. We went to hospital and although I didn’t need stitches, I had several bad scars.

It was December 1995 and Paul went missing for a few days after that. Mum said that was the final straw. In the weeks leading up to him effectively holding us hostage Paul had been taking heroin again. That had led to them rowing once more, and their arguments often turning violent. It was when Mum refused to cash in her benefit money to get him more drugs that he’d barricaded us in. In the aftermath of that day Paul was still in and out of our lives until eventually, after Mum spoke to social workers, it was decided that, for all of our safety, we move temporarily to a women’s refuge.

‘We’ll be safe there,’ Mum said.

I had no choice but to go along with it. I thought if it made Mum a little happier then it could be a good thing. I honestly think at times Mum wanted away from Paul and away from the drugs, the violence. She despised drugs and had never even smoked a cigarette at this stage of her life. I think she really believed this was a fresh start for her and her children. The refuge was not far from where we lived. We had a self-contained apartment with a kitchenette and bathroom, and there was a communal living room. Other children were staying there at the same time, who were, like us, fleeing their mothers’ violent partners. There was a manager who also lived in the quarters and no one was allowed in who wasn’t authorised. Mum could go out as normal but you weren’t allowed friends over and we couldn’t have family visit. It was all about our protection.

We were to be there for a few weeks, which meant we’d be spending Christmas in there. Mum told us not to worry, that Father Christmas would know where to find us. I felt sad because it wasn’t going to be the same. Like all kids I looked forward to Christmas. Mum always made a big deal of it and it was one of the few days a year when nice things happened. We would go to the pub where Mum worked, which opened for a few hours in the afternoon. Grandma would be there, and Marie and William and the regulars made a fuss of us and gave us money. There was always a lovely atmosphere. At our house, normally I would be the one to get up at 5 a.m. One year I was convinced I looked out of the window and saw Father Christmas leaving on his sleigh. Dad would give his gifts to Mum beforehand so we had them to open as well. Previously, even though Jack was not his child, he made sure he always put a gift in for him. Now Ellie was here too I was sure he’d do the same but I wouldn’t see him until after Christmas.

Dad was always buying me a new bike because although Paul had taught me how to ride it he used to steal them to sell for drugs. The bikes were usually kept in a laundry room off the kitchen and one time we came home from shopping and my bike was gone. The small window in the room was open. Paul claimed someone must have opened the window, climbed in and taken the bike, but there was no way the bike would have fitted through the window. Mum shouted at him to get the bike back. He never did, so Dad would have to buy a new one. He said to Mum that if he bought a new one it would stay at his house because he didn’t trust Paul.

That was the legacy of living with a lying, thieving drug dealer. And now another consequence was that we were spending Christmas in a refuge. It was like we were being punished for something, yet we had done nothing wrong.

Throughout this time I had more meetings with social workers and an educational psychologist. My school said I had a lot of problems. Once again, though, I refused to cooperate with an adult asking me questions. I couldn’t see how any good would come of it. I had bruises on my face, not just caused by the scarring from Paul’s violence. Mum was still hitting me when she became angry, which was a lot.

I never knew what would set her off. And it was terrifying how violent she became. Once when she was yelling at me I ran out of the room. She was still screaming so I stuck my head back around the door. Something hit me full in the face. It was a jug Mum had thrown.

On another occasion she came into my bedroom and pounced on me, pinning me down on the bed. I tried to shout and scream but the air was knocked out of me. I was struggling to find my breath. She grabbed my pillow and put it over my face. I panicked even more, flaying my arms and legs, trying to do anything to get her off. What was happening? Was she actually trying to kill me? What had I done?

Suddenly she let go and lifted the pillow off my face. I gasped for breath and leapt to my feet, in case she came for me again. She just put the pillow down and without saying a word walked out of the room like nothing had happened. I sat on the floor, my heart thumping, racing, trying to work out what had just happened – and why.

Even thinking about that incident now upsets me because the only question that runs through my head is: how could someone hurt a child that way? Her own child. How could a mother have that much hate in her body?

Life was pretty miserable in the women’s refuge. Mum was in such a foul mood a lot of the time that I tried to keep out of her way as much as possible. Sometimes I used to go downstairs and sit in the manager’s office and watch soaps with her on TV because I didn’t want to be with my mum. Anything was better than being in our apartment, not knowing when she was going to kick off.

She promised the social workers that she had split from Paul for good, but he still had control over her, even when they weren’t physically together. Mum told me Paul was in prison – for what I didn’t know, but most likely it was for drug offences. He was in Strangeways Prison, in Manchester, which wasn’t that far away from us.

When we moved out of the refuge into another flat, Mum made plans to go and see him. It wasn’t enough to just go and visit him, however. He made specific demands of her – and even though she was anti-drugs, and even though she knew how violent he had been towards us, it was like she couldn’t say no. She was completely under his control.

Jack was then two and still in nappies. The prison guards patted me down but they never used to search small children so Mum hid drugs inside Jack’s nappies. Even though there were cameras everywhere, Paul was allowed to have Jack on his lap. Mum had cut the lining of the nappy and stuffed the drugs into where the soft filling of the nappy would be. Paul would discreetly work his fingers inside and fiddle around until he had removed the package.

Another ruse she employed was to cut holes inside her pockets and secure wraps to her knickers and once she was inside the visiting hall she’d work the packet loose and give it to him. I knew all this because Mum did it in front of me before we went to see him. One of the neighbours came over and helped her. Paul was ordering her to do it and she was unable to say no. She was completely at his mercy.

Throughout this time I wasn’t at school and it was hard to stay in touch with the few friends I had made. From the moment we had entered the women’s refuge it was the beginning of a period where we seemed to be constantly on the move. We moved from temporary flats to another refuge to homeless hostels and other properties in Greater Manchester and the surrounding area.

We spent a second Christmas in a women’s refuge. This time was even bleaker than the last. Mum was in a foul mood. As usual, we had no idea what had set her off but she was determined to punish us for something. On Christmas morning she tried to say Father Christmas hadn’t been but I saw the curtains in the communal living area were bulging out and spied some bags of presents behind them. I don’t know what we’d done wrong but she refused to give them to us until much later that night. By then the fun times we’d had on Christmas Days in the past were distant memories.

It was a chaotic way to live. We only had a few belongings so life was a regular change of clothes, beds and other furniture. I soon learned not to become attached to my belongings as, almost without warning, we would be moving again and I’d never see certain things again.

Social services gave Mum grants to kit us out in new clothes. She started to order through catalogues. Sometimes a package of new clothes arrived. Mum would then get on the phone and say it hadn’t been delivered. They’d send out the same again and Mum sold the extra clothes on. They just used to leave the parcels outside the door so there was no way of them knowing if we’d received them or not. She did this with trainers, coats, everything.

Occasionally I would start at a new school but in a matter of weeks we’d move again and I’d have to begin all over again. I missed out on a lot of education. And at each school the process was the same. Teachers would interrogate me about my home life and I would clam up. I went to at least five or six schools over two years and as a result not only was it impossible to make lasting friendships but I felt victimised and bullied, forever the new girl with no fixed abode. Despite the challenging circumstances I tried to work hard in class, but just when I’d feel I was catching up we’d move once more and I had to start from scratch.

When Paul was nearing his release, social workers were asking Mum what she intended to do. They knew she was writing to him in prison and they were warning her not to get back together with him or she might risk losing her children. There were times during this period when we were put into respite care. It was obvious to everyone that she wasn’t coping but temporary care seemed to be the best they could come up with. I have vague memories of being placed with a kind older woman for a week. It was bliss to be out of the chaos with Mum. Jack and Ellen were put somewhere else. Despite Mum’s anger towards me she missed me when I wasn’t there and always wanted me back – even before she got Jack and Ellen. I remember there was one time when Jack spent a short time in a seaside town, perhaps to give Mum some respite. We had to visit social services there but for whatever reason Mum was not happy and started kicking off.

‘Well, keep Jack then,’ she said, leaving him on a desk in social services and taking me with her. I was thinking, ‘You can’t leave him there.’

The social workers were yelling at her to come back but it looked like she was being serious. Eventually she calmed down enough to see sense and went back to get him. I think her point was that she didn’t have the money to look after all three of us and unless they helped her she had no option but to leave one of us with them.

There was another time when we were in Blackpool because Mum took Ellen to see social services. My real dad had family nearby and we saw them at the same time. I remember being in the arcades, playing the 2p machines and the coin fountains.

Maybe Mum’s antics with social services had some effect because when I was around eight years old we moved to a new home in a neighbouring county. Paul was still not around. From what I could gather he was in prison and had moved from Strangeways to another one in Lancaster, prior to his release.

For a brief period we had some sort of stability. Uncle William lived with us and Mum took on a couple of jobs in pubs to earn some extra money. Grandma visited us and on some level it felt a little like it had been in the very early days. However, being with Mum meant there was always some sense of disruption. She spent so much time at one of the pubs we often stayed there with her and divided our time between there and the house.

The sad thing for me was that since our life had become nomadic, contact with my real dad had become less frequent. By the time we moved, that contact was in danger of completely breaking down. Mum was being difficult and not making it easy for us to see each other. It didn’t help when I was put into respite care, like I was when Mum decided to go on holiday with William and a man from the pub. They were going to Tenerife. We might not have been going with her but at least we got a holiday from Mum’s erratic behaviour. Even with the holiday she managed to create drama because she lost her passport in the run-up.

She had not been back long when, in March 1996, while I was still seven, there was yet another emergency when Mum put the chip pan on but then nipped next door to a neighbour’s house. She hadn’t taken a key and when the door closed behind her she was locked out. I was outside playing but Ellen was trapped inside in her bedroom. While one neighbour called the fire brigade a couple of others attempted to climb up a pipe to get into the top bedroom window. They didn’t manage it and it took the firefighters to break into the house to make sure Ellen was okay. She wasn’t hurt, and apart from some smoke the house wasn’t damaged, but it was a close call.

Once again, no sooner had we started to get used to our new surroundings than we were on the move again, this time to an old mill town not far from our first home.

Social services resumed contact with my dad, which I was extremely pleased about but Mum wasn’t happy. We met in a contact centre in the town and Mum started screaming at me to tell her where my dad lived – as she wanted money from him. It spilled out into the street and she was still yelling at me in front of stunned passers-by. Social workers were very much involved in our lives and they warned Mum again about resuming contact with Paul. He was now out of prison and if he tried to come back and live with us they believed we were in grave danger of further assaults. Mum told them what they wanted to hear. I didn’t know what to think. All I wanted was my old mum back, the one who used to show me how to draw and sang with me to her favourite music. But that mum was just a distant memory – and in her place was a troubled soul who was losing what last grip she had on reality.

And I would be the one to suffer most as a consequence.

Chapter 5

My heart thumped as I handed over the book. I was sure my face screamed guilty. I could feel everyone’s eyes on me.

‘You’ll be fine, Jade. Just act natural,’ Mum had said. This was important to her. I couldn’t let her down. I wanted to please her, wanted her to be proud of me. But if this was such a good idea – why did it feel so wrong?

The woman behind the post office counter took the giro book. She glanced at the page and then at me. I tried to smile, hoping my face said, ‘Nothing to see here. Just go about your business and process it as normal.’

She looked again at the book. She must know. This was a stupid idea. I was going to get caught.

‘Mum not with you today?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not feeling well.’

‘That’s a shame. Lot of bugs about.’

I nodded and had a glance around to see if anyone was coming towards me, like a guard of some kind. It looked fairly normal. I turned back to the woman who had a stamp out, thumped it on the book and counted out the cash. She handed it to me. I stuffed it into a pocket and got out of there as fast as I could to where Mum was waiting outside.

‘Okay?’

I showed her the bundle.

‘That’s my girl.’

She was happy. I’d done well. That was the best I could hope for. After that success, she tried it more often. Mum and a neighbour had worked out the way to defraud the benefits system. Using her skills as an artist she meticulously cut out tiny bits of paper and using a fountain pen wrote a date and carefully stuck it into the giro book. On Tuesdays she got her money as usual, then she sent me in with the doctored book to make her claim again. Both she and the neighbour were at it.

After the success of that first time they were keen to keep trying. When I went back the following week I felt more confident. Mum was right. It was easy. I took in the book, handed it over, the teller made a cursory glance at the book and the date, stamped it and handed over the cash. Looking back, it was quite entrepreneurial but there was also something very wrong about getting an eight-year-old girl to carry out your benefit fraud.

For several weeks we tried it and every time it worked. I started to get a bit bolder and thought nothing of going into the post office and queuing with all the adults. That was until the time when the woman paused longer than normal over the book. She studied the slip.

‘Who are you here with?’ she said. There was no smile. No small talk. She looked at me with a deadly serious expression on her face. I started to burn up. She shook her head. ‘No.’

I turned and ran out of the post office. Mum was outside as normal and now I was scared to tell her I’d got turned away. I was relieved that at least we only got told no. It could have been much worse. Mum was cross though. She was relying on that money. She never seemed to have enough. It would take me some time to work out why.

Early on in our new home it was clear we faced a new type of threat. We were living in quite a large house, over three levels. The first inkling I got was when someone smashed a downstairs window. A couple of days later another was put in. Mum got anxious. She couldn’t settle and at night, once she’d put Jack and Ellen to bed, she begged me to stay up with her.

‘Just sit with me, Jade. It will be fun, just me and you.’

It was like the times when she was worried Paul was going to hurt us. Just as then, I wanted to be with her, because at night-time she wasn’t as angry, just agitated. I stayed up as late as I could but I got so tired. She put the telly on but got up constantly to see if someone was coming to the house. She was living on her nerves.

‘I think people are looking for your dad,’ she said, referring to Paul. He hadn’t been at the house but when they found out who my mum was they took an interest in her. They didn’t know that she hadn’t seen him for years but they knew he had the name Harries and put two and two together. Jack and Ellen were his kids. If Paul was in hiding from the drug gangs he used to associate with, or if rivals were out for revenge over some dodgy deal and if they couldn’t get Paul, then we were the next best thing. Whatever Paul had done to make someone that angry we could only guess, but they were taking it out on us.

I don’t think Mum really knew who was targeting us. We had seen a gang exact its violent revenge on Paul before when men attacked him with crowbars so she knew what this type of people were capable of. As the weeks dragged on she got increasingly agitated. She was getting thinner as well. She stopped eating and wasn’t cooking proper meals for us. Still she sat up late but sometimes, even though she stopped me from falling asleep, she’d nod off on the sofa. She then woke up angry that she’d dozed off. She vowed to do something about it and started taking speed to keep her awake. She’d go for days without sleeping and it made her irritable and spaced out.

Then I began noticing the telltale signs I’d seen in Paul when he was on drugs. Her pupils went really small and the weight fell off her. No longer was she the curvy, vivacious mother I once knew, but a gaunt, skinny figure whose clothes hung off her and skin sagged. I suspected she was taking heroin – the same drug Paul was addicted to – to help her sleep after being strung out for several days on the trot.

That’s when things really unravelled.

Mum just wasn’t looking after us. She was paranoid someone was going to turn up – whether it was Paul or someone out to get him. She had social services in the background warning her not to make contact with Paul or she’d lose us for good. She was running out of money and was so strung out she failed in her duties as a mother.

None of us were going to school or nursery. We didn’t have proper bedding, our clothes were filthy and there was no food in the house. When I think back to the times when social workers quizzed me in the past about whether I was eating properly, at that point it was fine. Mum would prepare breakfast for us, mostly cornflakes, we’d get dinners at school and she’d cook a tea for us. Social workers used to give her food vouchers. Now, though, we had nothing – or if Mum was getting money or vouchers they weren’t being used to feed us. Often I was starving but I felt my priority was to feed my brother and sister. Mum simply wasn’t eating, but we had to.